Brunei's sultan weds Malaysian: Report

Brunei's sultan weds Malaysian: Report

Brunei's fabulously wealthy ruler Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah has
married a 26-year-old former Malaysian television journalist,
making her his second wife, reports said on Sunday.

The 58-year-old head of the oil-rich state married Azrinaz
Mazhar Hakim at a private ceremony in the Malaysian capital on
Friday night, The New Straits Times said in a front-page report.

It cited an unnamed guest as saying the ceremony was attended
by family members, relatives and close friends of the couple. No
other details were given.

The report could not be immediately confirmed in Brunei, where
the private lives of the royal family are often shrouded in
secrecy.

Azrinaz was educated in Malaysia and spent several years as a
broadcast journalist and later as a newscaster with private
station TV3.

She left TV3 in May this year, saying that she wanted to
"venture into other undertakings", the New Straits Times said.

Following her departure, rumors had been rife that she would
marry the sultan, whose vast wealth is fueled by his family's
control of the oil-based economy.

In February 2003, the sultan abruptly divorced his second
wife, former flight attendant Mariam Abdul Aziz, and ordered all
her royal titles withdrawn.

A royal announcement on state-run television gave no reason
for the divorce from Mariam, who is mother to two of the sultan's
four sons and two of his six daughters.

Polygamy is legal in the Muslim nation and the sultan remains
married to his first wife Raja Isteri Pengiran Anak Hajjah Saleha
whom he wed in 1967.

Brunei, a cradle-to-grave welfare state on the north coast of
Borneo island, is the world's fourth largest producer of natural
gas and third largest oil producer in Southeast Asia after
Indonesia and Malaysia.

The sultan was once rated the world's richest man, with
personal wealth estimated at more than US$40 billion. But his
fortune is said to have dwindled in recent years, partly because
of the 1997-1998 financial crisis.

A multi-billion-dollar financial scandal involving the
sultan's brother Prince Jefri is also credited with leading to a
change of tone in the sultanate.

The reported private wedding ceremony is extremely low-key
compared with the legendary excesses of past years, including the
sultan's 50th birthday party at which Michael Jackson was the
headline performer.

The 2004 wedding of Brunei's crown prince to his 17-year-old
bride was also seen as rather modest by previous standards. --
AFP